For a first trip, Louisiana means New Orleans, and the city has its own page with twelve experiences, from the St. Charles streetcar to a swamp tour and the Whitney Plantation; the USA page adds its live jazz and the beignets of Café Du Monde. West of the city lies a second, quieter Louisiana: Acadiana, or Cajun Country, around Lafayette, about 135 miles away on I-10, where French-speaking Acadians exiled from Nova Scotia in 1755 eventually settled.
This page helps you combine the two and adds three reasons to drive west: a Cajun music jam and a dance floor, the Tabasco factory on the salt dome of Avery Island, and the cypress swamp and bird rookery of Lake Martin.
Join a Saturday Cajun jam in Eunice, then dance in Lafayette
Savoy Music Center, Eunice, and Blue Moon Saloon, Lafayette
A Saturday morning and an eveningNo booking needed
Bring an instrument or just listen at a Saturday jam that has run for more than 40 years in an accordion workshop.
What it is
Cajun music, built on the fiddle and the button accordion, is still something people play together, and the easiest way in is a jam. Every Saturday from 9 am to noon, musicians bring their instruments to the Savoy Music Center, the accordion workshop of the maker Marc Savoy on Highway 190 east of Eunice, as they have for more than 40 years; anyone may join in, or sit and listen.
How to do it
In Lafayette, the Blue Moon Saloon at 215 East Convent Street, a music bar with a guesthouse upstairs, is the place to try a two-step or a waltz to live Cajun and roots bands; check its calendar before you go. Vermilionville, the living history village on Bayou Vermilion, holds a jam on Saturday afternoons.
Good to know
Glide Studios in Lafayette teaches two-step, waltz and zydeco if you want a lesson first.
Follow Tabasco from pepper greenhouse to barrel warehouse to bottling line on the salt dome where it began in 1868.
What it is
Avery Island is not really an island but a dome of rock salt rising out of the marshes, about 130 miles west of New Orleans, and Edmund McIlhenny began making Tabasco pepper sauce here in 1868. The self-guided Avery Island Fan Experience follows the process: the museum, a greenhouse of peppers, the barrel warehouse where the mash ages, the blending room, a salt mine exhibit and the bottling line that supplies over 195 countries and territories, ending with tastings at the Country Store and lunch at Restaurant 1868!.
How to do it
It opens daily from 9 am to 4 pm; adults pay $15.50, reservations are recommended and cash is not accepted. The ticket includes Jungle Gardens, 170 acres of oaks and bayous where the egret colony that Edward McIlhenny started around 1895, Bird City, still returns each spring.
Good to know
Ride-hailing cars do not pick up on the island.
Time needed
2 to 3 hours
Best time
From the 9 am opening, with lunch at Restaurant 1868!
Lake Martin, Cypress Island Preserve, near Breaux Bridge
Book ahead
Egrets, herons and roseate spoonbills fill a cypress rookery, and you can look for alligators from the lakeside road.
What it is
Lake Martin, a cypress lake between Breaux Bridge and Lafayette inside the Nature Conservancy's Cypress Island Preserve, is one of Louisiana's largest nesting colonies of water birds: great and snowy egrets, great blue herons, anhingas, white ibis and roseate spoonbills, with birds in the rookery all year. Unlike the deeper swamps of the Atchafalaya Basin, it is easy to reach by car.
How to do it
Drive slowly along Rookery Road, on the lake's edge; the preserve's visitor centre and a boardwalk over the swamp are at the south end. For the water, Champagne's Cajun Swamp Tours, at 1151 Rookery Road, takes flat-bottom boats through the cypress for $25 a seat, free for children under 3, and rents kayaks and canoes. It opens daily from 9 am to 5 pm.
Good to know
Look for alligators where other cars have stopped.
Give New Orleans at least three or four days: it holds most of what a first trip comes for, and the River Road plantations, the Whitney among them, are a half day out of town. Add Cajun Country if you have two or three more days. Lafayette is the base, with Breaux Bridge and Lake Martin just east of it, Avery Island to the south near New Iberia and Eunice out on the prairie to the north-west. Baton Rouge, the state capital, sits on I-10 between New Orleans and Lafayette.
How to combine them
Fly into New Orleans, spend the first days there without a car, then rent one and drive west. I-10 runs 135 miles to Lafayette, the last stretch on an 18-mile bridge across the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest river swamp in the country. Amtrak's Sunset Limited also links New Orleans and Lafayette three days a week, but out in Cajun Country you need a car: ride-hailing cars rarely pick up at Avery Island or on the River Road. Baton Rouge's State Capitol, the tallest in the country, is being renovated, so check before you stop.
When to go
February to May and late October to November are the comfortable months. Mardi Gras day is 9 February 2027: New Orleans has the parades, while the Cajun prairie towns of Mamou, Eunice and Church Point hold the Courir de Mardi Gras, masked riders who go from farm to farm begging ingredients for a communal gumbo. Lafayette's Festival International de Louisiane runs from 21 to 25 April 2027, just before Jazz Fest in New Orleans, and Festivals Acadiens et Créoles from 7 to 10 October 2027. Summers are hot and humid, and hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November.
Questions travellers ask
Is Lafayette worth visiting from New Orleans?
Yes, with two or three spare days and a car. Lafayette is about 135 miles west on I-10 and is the base for Cajun and zydeco music, Avery Island and the swamps of the Atchafalaya Basin and Lake Martin. As a day trip from New Orleans it is too much driving.
Do you need a car in Louisiana?
Not in New Orleans, where the streetcars and your feet cover almost everything. Outside the city, yes: Cajun Country, the River Road and Avery Island have little public transport, and ride-hailing cars rarely pick up there.
Where can you see a Courir de Mardi Gras?
In the Cajun prairie towns. Mamou and Eunice run theirs on Mardi Gras day itself, 9 February in 2027, and Church Point on the Sunday before. Masked riders, many on horseback, go from farm to farm collecting ingredients for a gumbo cooked that evening, and the day ends with music and dancing.
When is the best time to visit Louisiana?
February to May and late October to November, when the heat eases. Late April is festival season, with Festival International in Lafayette followed by Jazz Fest in New Orleans. Summers are hot and humid, and the hurricane season runs from June to November.
